'Covid vaccines preventing serious illness and death'

Dr Rob Orford said vaccination would do the "heavy lifting" in controlling the spread of Covid

The link between Covid-19 and serious illness or death is being broken by the rollout of vaccinations, according to Wales' chief scientist.

Dr Rob Orford said lockdown was behind current low transmission levels but the vaccine would now do the "heavy lifting" in controlling its spread.

Coronavirus hospital admissions are the lowest since the start of September and Wales' R number continues to decline.

Dr Orford termed the breaking of the link "uncoupling."

"We can see that in the evidence," he said.

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Wales' case rate as a whole was, for a period in December, among the highest in the world but has been falling since January. For more than two months, Wales has been below the other UK nations and is now at its lowest point since September.

Wales' infection rate has been below 50 cases per 100,000 - the case rate threshold - since 1 March while the Welsh Covid test positivity rate is now the lowest point since 4 September.

More than 1.6 million people have had their first Covid vaccine while almost 560,000 people have had both doses.

Dr Orford said was "very important" people take the opportunity to be vaccinated.

"Vaccines will prevent serious illness and death, and we are seeing that," Dr Orford said.

"We need to see that translated wider into cases and transmission.

"We need to be encouraging people that may be hesitant to get a vaccine, because perhaps they feel they are not vulnerable. Well, this has an impact for the whole of your community, for the whole of Wales."

Dr Orford said "population control" measures had resulted in the current low case rates.

He expected the vaccine programme to make more of an impact as more people were immunised.

He said: "As we progress, and more and more people become vaccinated, invariably the vaccination programme will do more of the heavy lifting, and that will enable us to have more of the freedoms that we had before Covid.

"We do need to be very careful around new variants."

Whether imported or homegrown they "could impact our way out of this period".

"We just need to continue looking at the data as we go, continue with the excellent progress that is being made with the vaccination programme," Dr Orford said.

"Hopefully that will set us up for more positive periods ahead of us."

Covid by numbers in Wales

• On Wednesday, there were 347 Covid patients in hospital and the daily average, 427, is the lowest since 28 September

• Confirmed and suspected cases have seen a 65% drop in a month. This is a 94% drop from the record levels of late-December.

• A total of 11 people were being treated in critical care or on ventilation, for confirmed or suspected coronavirus on 14 April, the lowest number since 19 September. This is 93% fewer than in mid-January

• On Wednesday, admissions to hospitals of confirmed and suspected Covid cases were running at a daily seven-day average of 15. This is the lowest recorded in the pandemic

• There were 20 confirmed or suspected Covid patients were admitted on Wednesday, half in the Cardiff and Vale health board.

• This is up on Tuesday's lowest daily number on record, 11. There were no Covid admissions in Swansea Bay health board hospitals

• Covid admissions now make up 1.3% of all hospital admissions